Activision Blizzard, the world's largest video game publisher, has been raising the ire of many gamers of late. So much so, in fact, that there is at least preliminary talk of a boycott of Activision products.

So what has the publisher done to create so much ill will?

A few things, actually.

UK gamers are incensed over Activision's plan to price the upcoming Modern Warfare 2 at £54.99 (roughly US$90). Wedbush-Morgan analyst Michael Pachter ominously described the move as a trial run for Activision:

Activision knows it has a 'hot' game, knows that the market will pay an additional 10 per cent, and has decided to increase price accordingly.

Game consumers are also concerned about Activision's pricing plans for specialty controllers for the upcoming Tony Hawk: Ride and DJ Hero.

Adding gasoline to the fire was a recent comment by Activision Blizzard CEO. During an earnings call last week, Kotick said:

You know if it was left to me, I would raise the prices even further.

PS3 News reports that some gamers are planning a boycott and links to an online petition which has garnered nearly 5,000 signatures to date. From the petition:

You're increasingly making your fanbase more angry. Your recent moves on the business side are head scratching and completely apauling [sic]. Tony Hawk peripherals to start, PC and UK price hikes and ridiculously overpriced collectors editions for MW2... Than [sic] your CEO decided to further anger your customers... I believe we are in what we call a "recession." What the consumer needs is not more expensive items, but less expensive...

Shame on GamePolitics for knowingly and wilfully omitting the context of Bobby Kotick's statement, which was clearly a joke, and here is being presented as if it were a crude suggestion at future or desired price hikes.

Not that any of you - or even GamePolitics - would understand, but big budget games (and games with hardware peripherals attached, like Tony Hawk) are hugely expensive to develop and manufacture and represent a substancial financial risk. Often a company like Activision banks more than just future Call of Duty or Tony Hawk titles on these bets, but much of the overhead and operational cost of business for large parts of its company, including the profitability necessary to take risks and try new and different kinds of things.

In short, you don't have all the information, you're looking for a fight where there really isn't one to be had, and you just need to stop whining. Nerd Rage/Gamer Indignation is just kind of silly and tired at this point...

If you don't like the price tag, than please, by all means, don't pay it, more power to you in your so-called boycot (while the rest of us enjoy the game) - but lets not pretend that this is greed.

This is economics.

Until ANY of you are willing to risk $50+ million of your own money on the world-wide launch of another Call of Duty game, I suggest you step down off of your high horse. You haven't got a clue.

The insipid neo-capitalist "shut up and spend your money peasants. Companies aren't here to supply your needs" is growing seriously tedious. Seriously, this is our fucking money. For some people that extra $10 might make the difference between a month or two as far as making that game purchase. When it comes to US givem them OUR money we have every right to be as selfish and demanding as we fucking well please.

Anyone who thinks that we should be silent when it comes to our money, fuck off.

-Ultimately what will do in mankind is a person's fear of their own freedom-

Haven't got a clue? In which case, why is it just in the UK that CoD:MW2 will be priced at a premium over and above all other territories? If this were truly about economics and economies of scale, then this higher price would be reflectcd globally, not just in the one market Kotick's Activison thinks it can price gouge and get away with it.

In case you haven't been paying attention, gaming companies are going out of business and consolidating at an alarming rate. It's hard to make money right now. Good games - even great games, like Killzone 2 for example - aren't even breaking a million units.

Even -IF- this UK price hike is a testbed for higher price points, that doesn't mean its being done to line Bobby's pockets, as GamePolitics so... dickish-bloggery-ingly... suggests. It's done to support a business. It's done so that if Wolfenstein (for example) utterly fails, Raven won't dissapear, and can instead have the financial backing to try again at something else.

Or would you prefer that all of those incredibly talented and hard working people just get laid off? The $20+ million it takes to make even a "just okay" game, has to come from somewhere.

But by all means... gather your torches and pitchforks and storm the Activision castle. If you don't have your noggin jammed firmly up your pooper, you may actually notice some of their really kind, sincere, and normal employees (people just like you), working really hard to build a successful business in a hit-driven climate that's destroying a lot of their peers. Then again, we wouldn't want that $10 difference and all of your unmitigated rage to be quelled by reason, would we?

Bollocks. they're doing it in the UK because they know they can get away with it here whereas consumers in other territories would balk at the price hike.

I don't appreciate this cavalier attitude and will instead spend my entertainment cash on products from other publishers. If MW2 does indeed turn out to be unmissable, I'll pick it up second hand.

I do feel sorry for Infinity Ward, especially as it's not them that sets the price, but £55 for a game is too expensive any way you slice it and I don't wish to be part of any precedent that ends up getting signed off by Kotick.

They should keep selling at regulkar price, then offer the MP as a downloadable option for around half price. Many people would buy the disc version (SP and MP), as well as the downloadable MP version for the sake of not having to walk to the console and put the disc in the drive. Massive BF1943 sales proved convenience is a factor.

Of course PC users are used to being able to play without the disc, AND PC games tend to be cheaper than their console counterparts, so that aspect would kinda be a double slap to Kotick's face. Did they say anything about the PC version raising proportionately, or will it actually match the console vers. price this time?

When it comes to online petitions like these, I'm skeptical about the participants' resolve.
Regardless, I hope enough people stick to this boycott. It will be a message to Activision and other publishers that they can't just screw gamers like this and get away with it.

Is Prototype that broken for some users? I haven't had a single issue with it, which rarely ever happens with any PC game. What are your sound issues exactly? I've read of some seperate unrelated ones.

Well damn, I was really looking forward to this game, but if they're gonna slap me with a $90 price tag, then I guess I'll just do what the smart people do and wait for the price to go down/wait for a store sale to lower the price.

I'm guessing that a good percentage of the people who buy games are the ones who don't mind spending a little cash, while the people who pirate are normally the ones who can't afford the games, penny pinch, etc.

In the end, while one or two might drop off, the people who buy will not mind meeting the price increase, even if grudgingly, and in so doing Activision might be hoping to make up for any pirating by milking the honest consumers.

Activision and EA need to learn there lesson. Honestly I trust Blizzard more but lately ever since the merger they really haven’t made the best of moves. Especially putting World of Warcraft in the hands of Team 2 Ghostcrawler. Almost everything he wants to do is focus on a small minority of players like Everquest and games like it did.

When his team got their hands on WoW they wanted to changed Dual Speccing from Leveling and helping lower level toons from having to focus on one speak to appease a guild he wanted it to be level 80 only and you needed to buy an expensive item and then you needed to summon a summon stone and have 7 people there just to change you specc.

People were pissed.

Thankfully the team overrides him often and most of the current patch does help lower level toons but even at 80 the 400 MEGS content addition is still exclusive to a select view who rep grinded

Reel in the EA hate a bit. They seem to actually be trying to please gamers across the board in the past year or so. If you were to make this comment about 3 years ago, then I would agree, but I can't be angry at EA because it seems that they have learned and are trying to adapt.

Meh, I wasn't going to buy any of this stuff anyway, and I certainly wasn't going to buy it new. If I discover that I actually want any of these games, I'll wait til the PS4 comes out and pick up them up from the $14.99 or less bin at Gamestop. I'll break their system regardless of how much they think I should be paying; I'm too patient and too cheap to get taken in by crap like this.

People won't boycott Activision in enough numbers for this little stunt to matter. Even if they did, people are not going to abandon Blizzard, so Activision will just view this as what it is: Noise.

I am down for people standing together in support of a cause they believe in. I just know that my fellow gamers are utlimately going to lap up pretty much anything thrown their way that is a good game even if they hate the company that makes it. Since gamers will do this and Activision is partnered with Blizzard and has them and Inifinty Ward cranking out 'must own' titles, this little farce will accomplish nothing.

I don't like Activision and will avoid their products personally, but I am not foolish enough to think that enough other people will actually stand their ground on this issue for it to make a bit of difference.

IMO collectors editions are just a plot for developers to squease more cash out of their game with the bonus stuff added as an excuse. I'm also concerned that Blizzard may be becoming tainted by Activision's influence, That's not to say I dislike Blizz. It's almost as if Activision is taking EA's place as the industry A-holes.

What Wormdundee said, plus the developers have nothing to do with pricing. That is entirely the publisher's thing. Developers make games because they enjoy them, publishers sell games because they enjoy money.

My god, it all makes sense now! The companies...they want people to pay more. Thanks for enlightening me as to the purpose of collector's editions :P

But seriously, cmon now. It's not some sort of fiendish 'plot', it's called business. They put out a version of the game with some stuff added in and charge more. It's pretty straightforward, it's not like people are forced to buy it.

I don't get why EA is still being ridiculed by gamers. Look at what they are doing lately. They got Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Skate, Dragon Age, The Old Republic, Mass Effect. These are all games that gamers want to be milked a little more. Even look at their sports games since Peter Moore came in. Madden 10 is the biggest update to Madden in the longest time.

Now look at Activision. We been getting a new Call of Duty ever year since release with two developers working on every other one (only the Infinity Ward ones are the good ones). There has been 10 Tony Hawk games in the past 10 year, with the latest one having a peripheral. Speaking of peripherals, not only they have Guitar Hero, but the guitar has been replaced in World Tour with the slider, new drums (even though Rock band is around), and now we have DJ hero coming in. This is especially annoying for Wii owners who have the Wii Balance Board, and Wii Motion Plus in the mix. Going back the the Guitar Hero Issue, there has been disputes on peripheral compatibility.

So who are the milkers now? EA has cleaned up over the pass couple of years, but Activision is going to clasp if they don't get new IPs.

Seriously. When did we get all this bullshit entitlement ideology? Activision doesn't need to give you games at prices YOU can afford. As long as people will buy it at that price, that's where they're going to sell it. If you don't like the price, don't buy it until it drops. If you don't like the price of the collector's edition, don't buy it. But don't assume that because you don't like the price, it's too high. I'm not excited about the 80 dollar price of the edition I'm buying, but I'm not whining like a little fucking brat.

This is just as obnoxious as those people who say they're going to protest Left 4 Dead 2. Grow up you self-entitled children, and learn to go without.

At what point did boycotts become taboo? I'm also curious to when companies became such sacred cows that they are excluded from anyone saying anything negative about them. The people flippantly throwing around the word "entitlement" really need to grow up themselves. All it is is trying to be a wannabe Sessler who himself is a wannabe bad ass. By calling people spoiled children is just a petty attempt to drive a wedge between them and yourself so you come across as looking "tough". Saying things like "companies aren't here because you want a product or service" is really missing the complete central fucking point of a company.

Customers should not just sit on their thumbs. Customer feedback to a company, be it positive or negative, is something that many companies seek out in order to critique and better themselves.

I can only surmise that you also think that a few years back when Coca-Cola put out New Coke that the customer complaints were just spoiled children then right? Perhaps they should have never brought back Coke Classic because of these unhappy consumers right?

-Ultimately what will do in mankind is a person's fear of their own freedom-

I would agree, somewhat. But just because the initial boycott petition was poorly executed (and they ALWAYS are) doesn't mean somebody who knows how to spell and write a paragraph or two can't also. Then again one risks splitting the signature base and end up ruining any form of progress made... so maybe petitioners need to be more sophisticated with their means instead of stamping their seal on anything that gets a general idea across.

And what would you suggest they do if they're angry about being charged what they perceive as rediculous amounts of money? All they're doing is telling Activision the price is too high and refusing to buy, seems the more mature thing to do.

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Debates are like merry go rounds. Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

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Debates are like merry go rounds.
Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

And if you don't like gamers petitions, feel free not to contribute to them or read them. Strange that you tell gamers to just ignore Activision if they don't like how they're being treated but you seem unable to do the same, instead posting your usual snark ridden, holier-than-thou brand of response, attacking anyone who dares to disagree with you. I'd say those considering a boycott aren't the ones who need to grow up.

Collector's Editions of cames, I can see them pricing any way they really want to. It doesn't bother me at all.

Raising the pricing of other games is a bit much. I play the crap out of all my games. Left 4 Dead was completely worth the 60 bucks I paid for as I've played the hell out of it (Getting so close to hitting that 65k kills). The thing I'm not happy as with us being charged for content when the PC gamers get it for free. I've read up on L4D2 and I'm content with what they have in store. It's early to release, but I think we'll be in for a whole suprise with the work they've done.I haven't really bought an Activision game in a long time. Last one? Maybe GH3? Activision really lost me when they completely milked the GH franchise to the point where there really is 10 GH's a year. I was pretty PO'd with the whole law suit situation with Double Fine over Brutal Legend (that game better come out!). The last Tony Hawk game in ther series I bought was THUG, and to this day I consider it the best of all Tony Hawk games.

I've mostly been against their content for awhile now. There is the occasion where I will pick up a game WHEN IT IS GOOD. I've been tempted to pick up on Prototype and X-Men Wolverine but I just haven't gotten around to it.

I'd be bashing EA but they pump out a lot more interesting games, though I wish Madden would stop, or at least turn into a DLC service.

PC gamers spend so much on "real hardware" that they should know they have to spend "real money" on real NGVs instead of the overpriced toy with an MW2 sticker on it Acti's selling. And a super light "metal" case (the medium edition) will only get dented. I learned my lesson with faux metal cases back when Halo 2 came out.

Prototype is perfect on PC except for lack of achievements via GFWL and the PS3's superior debris shadowing. Are you upset it doesn't have a thousand extra graphical effects settings?

EDIT: As far as Guitar Hero peripherals go, I'm pretty sure you can just get a wireless receiver for about $20 USD or so and pick up the 360 versions of the guitars. Said receiver is practically manditory to enjoy games like Prototype the way they were intended to be.

A self proclaimed PC gamer solely playing on a laptop sounds oxymoronic. You can't expect to get full modern game performance on a non-desktop machine. Such a type of gaming lifestyle isn't on Actiblizzard's radar. But in reality, you're saving yourself some dissapointment unless you just really REALLY want a small, computer sculpted render of Soap McTavish's head.

I can't find a single article claiming Prototype uses UE3. The resolution issue is based on video RAM, and the frame rate issue is bound to be because you're using a laptop. I've never gotten a drop below 30 unless I use 4xMSAA on 1920x1080.

And the practicality of the reciever is entirely subjective. I've found it to be one of the most practical pieces of PC hardware I've ever bought, especially at a sub 20 dollar price. But this is probably because I also own a 360 and have devices to share between the two. However I agree wired controllers are slightly better than the wireless counterparts.

Well, I've been boycotting Activision/Blizzard for a while now. Not that I started any online petition about it but Activision and Blizzard's action have resulted in me refusing to buy any of their games.

1- I had a really bad customer service experience with Blizzard in regards to World of Warcraft. I got suspended 3 days for a stupid typing mistake and a rep basically said "too bad for you".

2- Harmonix wanted to make the Guitar Hero Les Paul compatible with Rock Band on the PS3 and Activision basically said "pay us or screw you". Even though the Les Paul was compatible on the Xbox 360 and the Rock Band Fender Stratocaster was compatible with Guitar Hero.

3- Activision dropping IPs because they can't be exploited.

4- Activision getting upset and then suing when those IPs are getting picked by other publishers. Brutal Legends by Double Fine when it was picked up by EA.

5- Activsion overexploiting certain of their franchises (the 10 Guitar Hero games a year).

6- Bobby Kotick's general attitude toward the consumers (the exploiting thing, asking Sony to lower the price of their console when they plan on sell $200 games, etc.)

For all Star Trek fans out there, don't forget Activision's role in that franchise... "Activision alleges that "through its actions and inactions, Viacom has let the once proud Star Trek franchise stagnate and decay,""

Activision certainly didn't abuse the franchise with shitty games and refuse to support the few good ones. Oh, certainly not.

Shout box

Wymorence: For me it just boils down to the fact that, even at a giant company, when a game comes out annually it just gives it a vibe of being rushed out the door. And god knows Unity sucked some major lemur with all its bugs...03/31/2015 - 4:22pm

PHX Corp: I launched my spotify account today, and I kinda went a little overboard with adding music03/31/2015 - 3:59pm

Sora-Chan: Con't. Games like AC are a pain to someone like me who likes to play games in order. So when a game gets too many releases too quickly, it puts me off. Only exceptions are games that have no interconnected underlying stories like the FF games.03/31/2015 - 2:53pm

Sora-Chan: Wikipedia has rarely let me down on matters like this. But yeah... AC needs a break.. like two.. or three... or eight years.03/31/2015 - 2:51pm

Conster: There's 9 already?! I think I played 1, 2, and the ones inbetween 2 and 3.03/31/2015 - 2:23pm

Sora-Chan: Con't There are now Nine... of just the main entries into the series. There are 13 more in the "other games" department.03/31/2015 - 2:15pm

Sora-Chan: I tried to get into AC. Was having a decent time with the first one, at which point they had already released three titles. Then a fourth came out... then a fifth... the wall kept growing before I could finish the first.03/31/2015 - 2:14pm

Daniel Lewis: I think ubisoft should give AC a break before it's milked to death,and i'm a big fan of the games03/31/2015 - 1:15pm

Daniel Lewis: The only thing said i disagree with is the final quote on Men's experiences are seen to be universal but women are gendered,though doesn't anita say that games with male protagonists are male power fantasies,so in turn both are gendered03/31/2015 - 1:08pm

Daniel Lewis: i found the video to be much better than any of the TvW series and it's about time the positive women are put in the spotlight03/31/2015 - 1:06pm

Daniel Lewis: So feministfrequency released a positive female character video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXmj2yJNUmQ03/31/2015 - 1:05pm

Daniel Lewis: I think the guy who made the direct leak said it was an april fools joke when a real one was announced03/31/2015 - 12:43pm

MaskedPixelante: No way Nintendo would let information like that get out. Remember, they shut down a memoir about the localization of Earthbound by enforcing a 20 year old NDA on the author.03/31/2015 - 12:42pm

james_fudge: Conster: the larger issue is that Ind. does not protect LGBTQ+ people under state law03/31/2015 - 12:11pm

PHX Corp: @MP I think it is confirmed(not an April Fools joke) http://mynintendonews.com/2015/03/31/nintendo-direct-confirmed-for-wednesday-april-1st/03/31/2015 - 12:00pm

Conster: Apparently Pence intends to amend SB101 so denying service isn't allowed - without explicitly protecting LGBT+ and while still allowing the many other things you can get away with now if it's motivated by your religious beliefs.03/31/2015 - 11:53am

MaskedPixelante: http://mynintendonews.com/2015/03/30/rumour-nintendo-direct-on-april-1st/ A supposed full leak of tomorrow's Nintendo Direct, so you can all laugh and laugh about how wrong it is.03/31/2015 - 11:35am